Mission Journal: A visit to Russia's Supreme Court

At the end of our recent mission to Moscow, our delegation squeezed in one final official meeting. Vyacheslav M. Lebedev, the chief justice of Russia's Supreme Court, had sent word only the night before that he would receive us. The meeting had been brokered by Aleksei Venediktov, the legendary founder of the radio station Ekho Moskvy, who told us that Lebedev had a keen interest in freedom of expression issues.

Indeed, Lebedev not only affirmed this commitment, he drew a strong
parallel between the role of journalists and the role of judges in
mediating between competing forces within society. "The independence of
journalists is just as important as the independence of judges," he
proclaimed.

But it has been an uphill struggle to educate Russian judges about the
role of the media in promoting accountability and openness, Lebedev
told us. He pointed to several decrees promulgated by the Supreme Court
mandating public access to legal proceedings. He gave us a copy of a
June 15 resolution guaranteeing media access that had been translated
for the first time into English. I promised to post it to our website,
in case it was of interest to international legal observers, and it is
now available here.

I was somewhat surprised by Lebedev's effort to make common cause with
CPJ. He even explained that Russian judges had also been murdered with
impunity and asked me if I could suggest strategies for pursuing
justice based on CPJ's experiences.

The Russian government has been consistently hostile to criticism of
its human rights record, particularly when that criticism comes from
international NGOs. Somehow, the notion that CPJ had come to Russia to
pursue justice on behalf of our murdered colleagues seemed less
threatening. We had already noticed this during our meeting with top
investigators several days earlier. The chairman of the Investigative
Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, told our delegation in an earlier meeting that he was open to CPJ because we were focused on pursuing justice and promoting the rule of law rather than human rights. Of course, CPJ is a human rights organization when it serves our purposes. But if Russian authorities
felt more comfortable dealing with us as a group with a more narrow justice agenda, that was fine with us.

The Russian criminal justice system is opaque and highly politicized.
It has failed to identify and prosecute the killers of 19 journalists
murdered for their work in Russia since 2000. But we had to give the chief justice
credit on one point: Courtrooms are open. We saw this for ourselves on
September 28, when we paid a visit to the cramped courtroom in downtown
Moscow where Oleg Orlov, the head of the human rights organization
Memorial, is facing criminal defamation charges brought by Chechen
President Ramzan Kadyrov.

When journalist and human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was killed
in July of 2009, Orlov lashed out at Kadyrov, calling him responsible
for her murder. Kadyrov, who had previously bragged about his own role
in killing Chechen rebels and has been linked to numerous grave human
rights abuses, was a frequent subject of Estemirova's exposés.

Kadyrov has already won a civil suit against Orlov and is now pursuing
criminal action. The only positive note in this outrageous case was
that the proceedings were indeed open not only to us, but to human
rights activists, journalists and international diplomats.

I asked Chief Justice Lebedev his opinion about criminal libel and
Kadyrov's lawsuit against Orlov. Not surprisingly, he said he could not
comment on any case that might come before the court and did not want
to be seen as giving legal advice. But he said that, in his capacity as
a public official, he would never personally pursue a criminal libel
case. Regarding criticism of public figures in the media, he said, "As someone who holds a high office, you simply have to bear it."

Lebedev had been described to me as a charming political survivor. He
has presided over Russia's Supreme Court since 1989 and served under
four presidents: Gorbachev, Yelstin, Putin and now Medvedev. When I told him that we were afraid the Moscow traffic would make us late for our press conference, he smiled
knowingly. He escorted us out of the ornate meeting room, through the
modern building and into the street, then stood waving to us as our van
pulled away from the curb. A police escort pulled up in front and, with
its sirens blaring, guided us through the congested Moscow streets and
delivered us to our press conference right on time.

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He has written widely on media issues, contributing to Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Review of Books, World Policy Journal, Asahi Shimbun, and The Times of India. He has led numerous international missions to advance press freedom. His book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, will be released November 11, 2014. Follow him on Twitter @Joelcpj. His public GPG encryption key can be found here.